Howto smoothly run Red Dead Redemption 2 on a potato

[Codefreeze]

Or in my case on a fairly decent mid range pc, but i prefer constant fps that feel smooth over fps that are all over the place and dont feel smooth at all

Heres the situation:

- You wont reach 60 fps so you'll need to find a way to have an enjoyable experience with less fps


- Consoles do 30fps all of the time and it feels so much smoother than on PC. This is where i'll explain some stuff:

Consoles feel smoother because they have perfect frametiming. That is the time between each frame. This time should ideally be constant and as low as possible. On PC it isnt constant at all, except if you help it a little.

V-sync also helps to make consoles feel smooth even with only 30fps, because it syncs the fps to the refresh rate of the monitor. Therefore all the fps are shown effectively on the screen. (otherwise if they appear inbetween the monitors refresh cycle you lose performance, because the frame just isn't shown properly). To achieve all that follow this guide.

Last but not least the hated-on motion blur also helps smoothing the console experience. But its optional...


By the way: one advantage of limiting the games fps like we'll do, is that you can invest all of the unneeded PC-Power to raise the graphics settings


Little note: The built in v-sync of RDR 2 is junk. It just doesn't work don't even bother trying, always use nvidia's (not adaptive) vsync instead


In order for this to work your PC must be able to constantly maintain at least 30fps and average somewhere around 36-45 fps so that it never (or almost never) drops below the vsync.

1. So first of all if your PC is able to maintain MORE than 30fps in the game you might want to try and overclock your monitor. Most 60hz PC-Screens are also able to run at about 75hz. So we'll try to make that happen, so that the 1/2hz-vsync we'll use later is just a little bit higher than 30fps, maybe 37 fps or so (so you can utilize more of your hardwares capabilities). In case of nvidia just go into the control panel to "change resolution" and click adjust. In the next windows type a somewhat higher hz-count than 60. 70 is a good start. If its too high for your monitor it'll just say no input signal for a few seconds. Dont worry, it shouldnt be possible for you to break it this way.

2. Raise it until you found the highest stable value. In my case that was 74. Then apply the new resolution. Remember to afterwards set your game settings to 74 hz too. In my case this only worked with direct x not with vulkan.

If you cannot raise it, you can still follow this guide but you will only have 30fps. (But still with all the improvements that come with perfect frametiming) So still the same experience as with the xbox series x (which also runs RDR2 at 30fps)...

3. Now go to your nvidia control panel and for the settings of RDR 2 you want to change Power-Management-Mode into maximum performance and V-sync to adaptive half refresh rate(we will change it to non-adaptive in the next step). Also switch on tripple buffer.

4. Download and Open Nvidia Inspector and for RDR 2 switch Vertical Sync Tear Control to standard (this enables the vsync to properly reduce tearing which it doesnt on adaptive).

5. This step aims to reduce the input lag that comes with v-sync and improve the frametimes (by a lot). Download and open RivaTunerStatisticsServer and create a profile for the RDR2. Then look up your exact monitor refresh rate (the overclocked one) on this page https://www.testufo.com/refreshrate
divide the number by 2 and then substract 0.01 (for me it was 36.989). Enter the result into the frame limit setting of RTSS. By capping the framerate we take care of the frametimings. Afterwards the frametime should be constant. By using a framecount slightly less then half the refresh-rate, we improve the vsync-input-lag.

6. Now your game should run as smooth as possible with less than 60 fps. Just remember to disable vsync and triple buffer in the game settings. To further improve the input lag that comes with v-sync you might want to fiddle around with the frame limit in RTSS. You can change it by 0.001 increments to find the sweetspot were your input lag is lowest. It should be around +/- 0.015 of the starting value. When done properly this really reduces the input lag by a lot


I hope this helps someone. It at least helped me and I spent about 9 hours investigating all this stuff to find this solution. Just for this stupid game.,, so i had to put it on the internet... have fun